ITS BEEN over 100 years since HG Wells first published his groundbreaking
novel, The Time Machine, yet its subject matter - time travel - continues
to provide the source of inspiration to countless Hollywood directors.

Done well, the concept can be very rewarding (witness The Terminator movies),
but done badly, the theme of time travel, quite frankly, seems like a waste
of time.

Now, however, Hollywood returns to the source material itself for a big-budget
re-working of the Wells classic, starring the esteemed likes of Guy
Pearce and Jeremy Irons as well as, um, Irish pop sensation Samantha
Mumba.

The resulting movie, while technically proficient and fun in places, is as
uneven as its casting suggests; making it a quickly forgettable experience.

Wellss novel offered a fascinating insight into the wonders and horrors
that the future might hold, taking the what if? scenario to its
ultimate extreme - that of the worlds destruction - while also providing
commentary on evolution, futurism, class-consciousness and socialism.

Director Simon Wellss movie, however, merely scratches the surface
of such topics, offering only brief glimpses of what could have been.

Wells, who is the great-grandson of the author, includes some nice nods to
the past but his movie attempts to play to the masses and feels empty and
vacuous as a result.

Worse still, much of the humour is unintentional, while some of the performances
leave a lot to be desired - Mumba, in particular, seems to register a singularly
blank expression whatever the dilemma placedbefore her.

Pearce, so charismatic in the likes of Memento
and the recent Count of Monte
Cristo, makes for a dull hero, while Jeremy Irons isnt allowed the
screen time to present a credible villain - and when he does appear, ends
up looking like a cross between Gary Oldmans Dracula and something from
Travoltas Battlefield Earth. Only Orlando Jones, as Vox (the compendium
for all human knowledge) lightens proceedings.

The special effects are as good as we have come to expect, but Wells movie
spends most of its time in all the wrong places; so that the destruction of
New York by a crumbling moon only gets seconds, while the drab futuristic
sequence - inhabited by Elois, Morlocks and Mumbas - seems interminable.

And, as is so often the case with Hollywood productions nowadays, everything
plays strictly to formula, drifting into a tiresome retread of countless other
movies - ie, you can guess the ending a mile off.

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